Skip to main content

Fake engine sound makes EVs safer, fun to drive

Forthcoming legislation in the USA, EU and Japan will require that all electric vehicles emit an alert sound at lower speeds in an effort to prevent the increasing number of accidents where pedestrians are hit by silent electric vehicles.
September 10, 2013 Read time: 1 min
Forthcoming legislation in the USA, EU and Japan will require that all electric vehicles emit an alert sound at lower speeds in an effort to prevent the increasing number of accidents where pedestrians are hit by silent electric vehicles.

Swedish company 7478 SoundRacer has developed EValert, an electronic engine sound product, to give a realistic sound indicating if the vehicle is idling, accelerating, decelerating or cruising. The different sound characters and sound volume are determined from information about the actual speed of the vehicle.

Says Kenneth Palmestål of SoundRacer: "SoundRacer is to our knowledge the only developer of EValert sound systems that use real engine sounds. After studying several reports we are convinced that real engine sounds will be less disturbing and have better alerting effect than other sounds.”

The company has developed two versions of the device; the acoustic vehicle alerting system (AVAS) which enables electric vehicles to meet the coming legislation; and  one which provides real engine sounds  and even lets the driver change from the sound of a Ferrari V12 to a Mustang V8 with the press of a button.

Related Content

  • July 27, 2012
    Measuring vehicle lengths with a single loop - promising results
    District 7 of Caltrans has been conducting trials to see whether the use of a single inductive loop to measure vehicle lengths and so identify heavy trucks is feasible. So far, the results have been very promising, according to Lead Transportation Engineer Steve Malkson. Between them, the adjoining ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the US's two biggest, cover some 10,700 acres (43km2) and 68 miles (109km) of waterfront.
  • January 30, 2012
    e-Call emergency service doesn't go far enough
    eCall misses the point and is only a tacit acknowledgement that the road safety issue has not yet been adequately addressed, according to FEMA's Aline Delhaye. According to the Federation of European Motorcyclists' Associations (FEMA), the European Commission's (EC's) ambitions for eCall implementation are premature and fail to take account of all road users' needs or of technological progress elsewhere.
  • February 1, 2012
    Cooperative systems and privacy not mutually exclusive
    Are co-operative systems and personal privacy mutually exclusive? Not necessarily, says Neil Hoose. But the more advanced the application, the greater the concession of privacy may have to become. ITS Stockholm in 2009 and the Cooperative Mobility Showcase event which took place alongside Intertraffic in Amsterdam in March this year both featured live, on-street demonstrations of safety and driver information applications that used Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications,
  • February 6, 2012
    Cooperative systems and privacy not mutually exclusive
    Are co-operative systems and personal privacy mutually exclusive? Not necessarily, says Neil Hoose. But the more advanced the application, the greater the concession of privacy may have to become